Information War Sparked as US Firm Tackles Nielsen

Information War Sparked as US Firm Tackles Nielsen

Article excerpt

A battle for the control of the data captured by supermarket scanners begins this week as US-based retail tracking firm IRI launches in the UK.

IRI claims to be beating Nielsen in the US in the battle for retail tracking contracts despite being only about a quarter of the size. Now, it says it can do the same here.

Its pitch, under the name of Infoscan, positions it head on against Nielsen, which currently has around 90% of the market.

"UK companies are paying too much for too little," declares Infoscan NMRA managing director George Garrick. "We're precipitating a revolution in the whole field of information technology for retail tracking".

Garrick is telling potential clients his firm can offer more stores' tracking data in a more user-friendly form, plus leading-edge expert system software -- all for a lower cost than Nielsen's current standard service.

And, while Nielsen will be offering its customers named account data from Safeway from January, Infoscan has signed up Asda.